


a kind of shelter

by hardboiledmeggs



Series: a borrowing of bones [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, POV Steve Rogers, PWP, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), magical healing sex, steve and sharon are too similar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:56:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6996709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers kisses Sharon Carter under a bridge outside of Leipzig, and he hopes it will say everything he doesn’t know how to. <i>Thank you. I’m sorry. I wish things were different. I </i>want<i> you</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a kind of shelter

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to knock out three prompts in one go: Steve and Sharon meeting after Civil War, and a PWP prompt for Sharon/Steve counter sex and Steve/Sharon laughing during sex. So. Here it is.
> 
> Also, as a PSA: In this instance Sharon is packing some hormonal birth control. That said: don't forget your condoms, kids.
> 
> Submit Sharon/Steve or Sharon/Bucky prompts on tumblr [here](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com).

Steve Rogers kisses Sharon Carter under a bridge outside of Leipzig, and he hopes it will say everything he doesn’t know how to. _Thank you. I’m sorry. I wish things were different. I_ want _you._ Sharon’s hand curls around the back of his neck, her tongue brushes his, and Steve feels his whole body turn electric. He feels dumb and horny as a teenager, wishing they weren’t being watched, wishing he wasn’t about to catapult himself head-first into a heartbreaking, ruthless fight.

 

He still remembers how he’d hated her, once. How betrayed he’d felt. He remembers the bitter pain and embarrassment that came with remembering how many times he’d touched himself and thought of her, when she’d been his kind-eyed neighbor and nothing more. Later, he’d realized how Fury had trusted her, the responsibility that he’d given her; and Fury was one of the few people worth trusting in the world.

 

And so Steve gives in to her, and to himself, at last, standing with her under that bridge, not knowing how he’ll survive what he has to do next.

 

It’s the last time he sees her for four long months. The space in between the _last_ time and the _next_ time is filled with destruction and grief. Steve hides from the world, going deep underground, purposefully leaving behind everything that reminds him of himself.

 

He ends up in Chiang Mai. He dyes his hair dark and lets stubble grow on his face. He eats food he’s never tasted before and sketches architecture and streets and landscapes that are utterly foreign to him. Even though he’s alone, even though he’s in mourning, it feels like freedom.

 

Sharon finds him there. He senses her tracking him through winding, crowded streets. Steve catches a glimpse of her in the reflection of a shop window. Her hair is tucked up and under a baseball cap; her eyes are hidden behind iridescent sunglasses. She wears a simple, cotton wrap dress and sandals, a uniform he sees often on tourists exploring the city. The late spring heat has turned her skin flushed and dewy. His heart clutches in his chest; for all that he’s forsaken everything he knew, seeing a familiar face sends a shudder of relief through him.

 

After a few blocks, she gives up trying to be covert. Steve can feel her at his back as he makes his way into his apartment building, a half-renovated four-story tower that is part ramshackle and part modern.

 

He pushes his key into the lock. Sharon leans against the doorjamb, bold as brass. She slides off her sunglasses, takes off her hat, and looks at him squarely. For a long, still moment, all he can do is look back at her.

 

“Hello,” she says at last. She smiles, just slightly.

 

Steve just nods, his hand cupping the doorknob, still not sure if he should be happy to be found or not.

 

Sharon swallows, looks down at her feet, crosses her arms across her stomach, and looks back up at him.

 

“I’m on leave,” she says in a low voice, and Steve’s brow furrows. She isn’t on anyone’s payroll; she’s found him, tracked him down, sought him out, on her own time. She has no reason to be here, except to see him. “I thought maybe you…” she pauses, sucks her lower lip between her teeth, “I just wanted to see how you are. How are you?”

 

Steve lets out a breath, lets his shoulders sag. It feels like it’s been years since anyone truly asked him about himself. Everything crashes down around him – he _misses_ people, he misses _his life_. He thinks of Natasha and Bucky and Sam, of the Avengers compound and the café in Williamsburg where the baristas knew how he liked his coffee. His eyes well up. His throat constricts. It’s a familiar feeling – horror and panic and regret – but he hates that it hits him _now_.

 

“Steve?” Sharon asks, and he knows she must see everything that’s happening inside him written on his face.

 

“I’m. I…” he takes a breath, not sure how the sentence ends. “Can we just—“ he starts. _Can we just move past talking_ he thinks, _because I’m terrible at it._

 

He’s pretty sure Sharon can’t actually read his thoughts, but all the same, at that moment she takes his hand and nods towards his stlll-closed door.

  

*

 

Compared to the sweltering outside air and busy street, the inside of Steve’s apartment is eerily silent and air conditioned into near-frigid temperatures. Sharon lets go of his hand and bends to unhook the buckles on each of her sandals; she steps out of them and tucks them next to the door. Steve does the same, nudging his worn Nikes in a line next to hers.

 

He stalls on that for a moment – his heavy sneakers next to her delicate sandals, in a place where he’s never brought anyone, where he’s been living a life that threads the border between solitude and loneliness.

 

“Steve.” Sharon’s seen him looking. Steve flushes with self-consciousness, sure that she’s realized now how utterly broken he is. “We don’t have to talk, if you don’t want to,” she says in a quiet, unmistakable tone. _Words aren’t going to help a goddamn thing_ she tells him without saying it, _Why don’t we try something else._

Steve’s half-hard just at the thought of it – the hair-trigger the serum left him with has been a blessing and a curse. It’s been actual decades since the last time he got to hold on to a woman, since the last time he got to fuck and be fucked. He thinks about the whip-smart chorus line girls who took his virginity and taught him everything he needed to know about slapstick; those girls who wrapped their legs around him in dressing rooms and empty train cars and seedy motel rooms. It’s been _that long_.

 

He reaches for her, and she comes to him as effortlessly as she had that day in Leipzig. She presses up against him and opens her mouth under his and Steve falls to pieces. Sharon reaches up, stretches up on her toes and loops her arms around his shoulders.

 

Despite the air conditioning, the room feels close and hot; Steve’s skin pricks and flushes. Sharon whimpers when he nips at her lower lip and moves his mouth to lay a string of kisses from her jawline to the base of her neck. Against his lips, he can feel her pulse quicken, feels her heart pound. Steve feels the echo of the blood-beat in her body between his legs; his cock fills – he is hard and aching and urgent.

 

He spreads his hands wide on the sides of her waist – she is small, but sturdy and strong under his palms – and pushes her backwards, guiding her into the apartment’s closest room.

 

*

 

The kitchen is small and sparse, hardly used. Steve lifts Sharon by the waist, setting her on the edge of the counter and stepping between her knees, pushing up the hem of her dress as he moves. Sharon keeps one hand on his shoulder, bracing herself with the other pressed flat against the counter as Steve grinds his hips against hers. For a moment, that’s enough – his hands in her hair, her mouth on his, their bodies pressed tight together, moving just enough, gaining just enough friction to send sparks up and down Steve’s spine.

 

Then, to his near-ruin, Steve makes the mistake of looking down. Sharon’s thighs are bare; her knees are bent at his waist. Between them, there is no space between the hard, denim-covered bulge in Steve’s pants and Sharon’s soft, white cotton panties. He rolls his hips and catches a glimpse of a growing dampness; she’s wet for him already, soaking through the thin fabric, and the sight of it makes Steve’s body short-circuit. He hears a soft cry in his own voice and reaches out blindly for support. His hand lands on a cabinet; the wood cracks under his grip.

 

Sharon, still two steps ahead, grabs his belt buckle and tugs it loose. She fumbles, unused to the angle; Steve pushes her hands away and nearly tears the button fly open. Sharon pulls his shirt up to his armpits and Steve does the rest, tearing it over his head and throwing it to the floor.

 

He stops himself just as he starts to reach into his briefs. “Is this—Am I—Is this—“ he sputters, pulling his hands away and holding them up to her, “Christ, is this okay? Is this _okay_?”

 

It hits him that not talking might have its pitfalls. It hits him that he’s been guessing at what she’s thinking without _knowing_.

 

“What—Yes,” she gasps, “yes, yes, _yes_.”

 

“What about—“

 

“I’m on it.” Sharon kisses the corner of his mouth, shoves her hands down the front of his briefs and wraps her hand around the base of his cock, guiding him towards her. “Don’t worry.”

 

“I’m not,” Steve mumbles incoherently, his eyes falling closed as she pulls aside her panties and brings the flushed head of his erection against her center. The entire world narrows to one point – to the place where their bodies are touching, slick and hot and a million times _more_ than anything he’d ever imagined having with her.

 

He takes hold of himself, fitting his hand over hers; he runs the head of his prick up and down her folds once, twice, and then slides inside. It feels bizarrely natural – to touch Sharon and be inside her – and at the same time, it makes him feel like he’s coming apart at the seams. After a few thrusts, he starts to lose control. His hips buck against her wildly; he screws his eyes shut to try to hold on, but when Sharon brings her mouth close to his ear and whispers “ _It’s okay_ ,” he lets himself come, gasping and clutching at Sharon desperately, shocked by how impossibly _good_ his body feels.

 

It takes him a full minute to come back to himself. When he does, he realizes that Sharon is still keyed up, flushed and panting; she looks up at him with dark eyes, still hovering on the brink of her own orgasm.

 

Mortification comes easily to Steve, and he knows that he ought to be embarrassed that he'd come without waiting for her first, but for once he’s too relaxed and sated for it. Instead, he simply kisses her sweetly, pulls out of her and drops to his knees. Her panties are a sodden mess; the fabric rips easily in his hands. When he sucks her clit into his mouth, Sharon cries out in surprise and reaches for him; her hands clutch at his hair and shoulders, setting them both off balance.

 

Steve catches her – just barely; his heightened senses are dulled by pleasure – and rolls her to the floor, letting her down on the ceramic tile as gently as he can manage and settling again between her legs.

 

If there’s one thing Steve’s never been, it’s squeamish. Sharon comes once, twice, as he licks the taste of himself out of her. She shudders and weaves her fingers into his hair and arches her back and moans and whimpers until Steve can’t help but be hard again.

 

Sharon pulls him back up to her with desperate, grasping hands, yanking him roughly to her. She kisses him and he kisses her back; it’s wet and messy and Steve can’t stop fucking _smiling_.

 

He covers her body with his; his cock – hard and flushed and already leaking at the tip – drags along the tender skin of her inner thigh, half-accidentally and half-on purpose. Sharon trembles in his arms.

 

She lets her knees drop, lets her legs fall open wide, and Steve lets his erection drop between them.

 

“Okay?” he asks.

 

She smiles and says back, “Okay.”

 

Steve pushes into her, slower this time. Sharon hitches her knees higher on Steve’s hips, curling her body up to meet his. Then she pushes his shoulders and maneuvers his hips with her legs until he’s on his back where she had just been. The tile under him is warm.

 

She works her hips against his at an easy, lazy pace. The fall of her dress obstructs Steve’s view, so he pulls at it until she takes the hint and takes it off. Her bra is beige cotton – practical and straightforward, like her. The stretch and twist of her body as she reaches behind her back to unhook it is indescribably beautiful; for the first time in a century, Steve feels like the luckiest sonofabitch in the world.

 

“I can’t remember the last time I had anything this good,” he says, tracing the lines of her body with his fingers.

 

“Hm,” she hums, and something serious and sad passes over her expression.

 

“Is it, for you too?” he asks, “I mean, not that you don’t have good things in your life. Just. I want this to be. Good. For you, too.”

 

Sharon’s body stills against him. She stares for a moment, and Steve feels completely ridiculous. He’s seconds away from retreat when—

 

“It is,” she says. She smiles at him the way he remembers girls smiling at Bucky: utterly, sincerely charmed. It makes his heart swell. Then she runs her hand down his chest, scoring her fingernails on his skin, and bites at her bottom lip. She bends to kiss him, rolling her hips at the same time, fucking him slowly and purposefully.

 

Steve loses track of time and space for a long while. He hadn’t known how much he needed this; he feels reborn and new. Then, abruptly, Sharon sits up, looking down at him with wide eyes. Her hair is a rats’ nest; her skin is flushed and shining. Steve bites back a groan.

 

“I didn’t expect this,” she says quickly and earnestly, like she’s been worrying about it. “I thought…I thought _maybe_ , but I didn’t expect anything.”

 

Steve laughs, open and light. “You should have,” he leans up to kiss the corner of her mouth and pulls her hips down into his, hard. “God, I’m glad you came.”

 

She laughs breathlessly, and grinds her hips into his, goading him into a half-dozen more thrusts that tip him over the edge for the second time.

 

Steve pulls her to him – tugs at her arms and side and head until she’s flush against his chest. They breathe together, and it feels quiet and serious and real.

 

Sharon’s reaches up to brush her fingers against his forehead, pushing back a few strands of hair that sweat had plastered to his forehead. Steve can see angry red rash marks on her neck and wishes he’d shaved.

 

“Do you…” she hesitates and smiles shyly, “You have a bed, right?”

 

Steve laughs; his heart feels so much different now than it did minutes, hours, days before.

 

“Yeah,” he says. His limbs still feel loose and too relaxed, but he sits up and grabs her around the waist. “C’mon,” he says, with a deliberately wolfish smile, “I’ll show you.”


End file.
